The object of this challenge is to design a character and then animate a 360 spin of it. No more no less, this is a fairly difficult task so really focus on making the spin convincing rather than some background.

As for restrictions, 24 fps or 12fps is acceptable. The smoother the better, but I'd rather the frames you do have be very polished rather than tons of messy ill-thought filler frames for the sake of smoothness. Try saying that 5 times fast.

Dimensions are up to you.

Keep it under 10 seconds.

No background

I'm going to extend the deadline from its usual 2 weeks to 1 month, Sunday February 7th

The Winner will recieve honorary supporter status from the big cheese, Tom Fulp.

This is a really good exercise because

You learn to design a character that you are able to manage, basically knowing your limits, after that you can try to push your limit either in design or the animation of the character itself.

You will train your sense of volume on a flat plane (the screen/ paper). Ultimately you want to "break the picture plane" as they say, to create the illusion of space.

Something to think about when you design and animate your character; work with basic shapes and then build on top of them. Before even animation the character reduce the information to large spheres and cubes. This guy does it in his video if you want to really see the technique in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtkbfoDjhHA

As a side note: If you really want to train creating the illusion of volume try doing some drawing from life and figure drawing. Nothing beats a knowledgeable instructor, but if you can find a place near you that offers figure drawing I'd suggest going and picking up this book as a substitute for an instructor: http://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Figure-Drawing-Burne-Hogarth/dp/0823015777. I remember when I stopped animating for a couple years while I was in school learning about drafting and painting. When I came back to animation I was better even though I stopped for so long. That's how much understanding form and figure help when it comes to animation